Fallow

Aaron Hayes's grandpa was a United States congressman. Aaron himself graduated from Exeter, matriculated to Cornell, pledged a frat, and identifies with the "beamish boy" from Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark." In short, he's the whitest, WASP-est child of privilege you'd ever want to meet. So there's a political message in the transformation he undergoes when a summer beekeeping job leads to a year of migrant farm work—which leads in turn to his gruesome murder at the hands of rednecks who take him for a "beaner." Playwright Kenneth Lin presents that message through parallel narratives: Aaron's journey juxtaposed to his mother's trek to California to meet the convicted rednecks. The narrative is heavy-handed, Lin's sympathies are obvious, and his climax is pat; you'd at least hope Keira Fromm's staging would be commensurably straightforward. Instead, it's ponderous, puzzling, and weirdly disjointed. A theatrical double whammy. —Tony Adler